Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Gabe Moreen with Bank of America - Merrill Lynch. Your line is now open. You may proceed.
Gabe Moreen - Bank of America - Merrill Lynch
Hey good morning guys. Question on potential distribution increases for the remainder of the year. I guess Greg in your mind, is any one metric out there that you're overweighting relative to others that I guess we should be focused on, whether it's fixed income, market improvements, MLP equity valuation improvements, or just broader economic backdrop? Just trying to gauge what you are thinking there.
Greg Armstrong
Gabe, good question. We aren't going to provide guidance. I can say that we are pretty... we have had 29 straight quarters which goes over seven years of delivering on our guidance. And we need to be able to do that, to continue to do that to obviously drive future growth. I don't want to sound like a Cassandra with respect to the future, but we are probably not as convinced at this point in time that the fundamentals of the economy have actually... are supporting the enthusiasm we are seeing in the financial markets. And so we are a bit cautious. I would say that what we're looking for is confirmation that the fundamental economic groundwork has stabilized and we just... we haven't seen that yet. So we'll continue to be cautious.
I think when we... as we did already, by increasing the distribution at this point, we recognized that our positioning is very strong and that the markets that really paralyzed, if you will, back in September of 2008 through really November to early December of 2008... that part of it has seemed to have melted a little bit and that is encouraging.
Bottom line is it says quality companies can access the market. Maybe the costs are higher than they used to be, but they have access to capital. There was a period of time in there where there was not certainty that anyone would have access. I would say that we are just going to continue to monitor the market. We've got to deliver on our performance, but I think we'll continue to monitor it. If the current environment, the feel of the environment in the financial markets were to continue, I would say that would be a positive sign for future distribution growth. If it got much weaker, I think it is a positive sign for PAA to be able to use that liquidity to take advantage of opportunities.
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